


Stormy Wedding

by The Little MerBucky (blue_pointer)



Series: The Back of the Closet Leads to Narnia [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Fantastic Four (Movies 2005-2007), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1990s, Architect Sam, Awesome Sam Wilson, Bar Room Brawl, Barnes Family, Best Friends, Bucky Barnes & Sam Wilson Friendship, Bucky's Sisters, Closeted Bucky, Comedy, Construction Worker Bucky, Dead Steve, Drama, Dramedy, Homophobia, Johnny Storm as the bad guy, Johnny Storm is a jerk, Johnny Storm is one of them, Leaving before the police arrive, M/M, Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, Sam Wilson is a Gift, Stag Nights & Bachelor Parties, Weddings, When you have your own soundtrack, dreaming of male prostitutes, fagbashing, gay men who have sex with women, kung fu fighting, memories of Steve, sex worker Tony, some men are pigs, the back of the closet leads to narnia, when your best man isn't, when your sister is constantly saving your ass, why does Johnny Storm look so much like Steve?, winteriron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-10-14 05:55:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10530300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_pointer/pseuds/The%20Little%20MerBucky
Summary: Bucky can't concentrate at his own wedding. It's a sham. And as if being gay and marrying your best squirrelfriend weren't bad enough, his brother-in-law to be is the spitting image of Steve Rogers. Too bad that's where the similarity ends. When his homophobic brother-in-law decides to teach Bucky a lesson, Sam has his back.If only Bucky could find time to call that cute boy he picked up in an alley last week. Thinking of Tony is way more fun than Bucky's new married life so far...





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is sort of an interlude chapter, because the part where Bucky calls Tony went long enough to make its own chapter.

Bucky cried at his wedding. More than the bride. It was one of the most important days of his life, and he just couldn’t stop. Maybe it was the fact that this whole marriage was a sham. That he was letting his best friend down. His family. Her family...

But more than anything, he couldn’t stop thinking of Steve. Steve, who should be here with him. Steve, who should have lived. Steve, who maybe--just maybe--could have stopped this from happening. And if he couldn’t, at least he would have been here at Bucky’s side.

Of the three groomsmen, only one of them had been Bucky’s choice: Sam, who wasn’t even a friend, really. Just a co-worker. A great guy, but all the same. He was one of the architects Bucky’s company worked with. They’d gone from working lunches to sports nights at bars. He was the only person not related to Bucky who could be relied on to return social emails or texts within a few days. That was what qualified as a male friend for Bucky these days. To Bucky, there was a gaping chasm of emotional distance between them. But Sam was always happy to get together, to talk nothing important, to hang out. It wasn’t Sam’s fault Bucky wasn’t honest with him. 

The other groomsman, her good friend Ben, brick wall of a guy, scared the hell out of Bucky. He looked like a punisher for the mafia. His fiancee assured him that Ben was just a concrete-coated teddy bear, but Bucky had yet to see it. He watched Bucky suspiciously, seemed to have that look many of her friends wore. The ‘you’re not good enough for her’ look. And Bucky couldn’t disagree. She deserved better. A lot better.

Then there was the best man, an oxymoron in a way, because he was the one who hated Bucky the most. And, if Bucky told the truth, he was probably 75% of the reason for all his tears. Because the best man, her brother, somehow--in a way he couldn’t quite explain--reminded him so much of Steve, Bucky had a hard time looking at him. Which was problematic, considering he was the best man, and the ring-bearer.

He couldn’t really say why Johnny reminded him so much of Steve. Steve had been a little guy, whip-thin, pale-skinned and frail his whole short life. If only they’d found a donor in time. If things had been different, if Steve hadn’t been born sick, could he have grown into the hunky side of beef Sue’s brother was? Bucky wasn’t sure. But there was something...something just weird. Maybe the resemblance only existed inside his head. Maybe it was his gayness coming out, because Johnny was godly-hot. Women threw themselves at him in large numbers, and he was always perfectly poised to catch them. Catch and release, he called it, the pig. If a guy like that had ever tried to come on to Sue, Bucky would have punched his lights out on sheer principle. He would have been half-stiff doing it, but still. Fortunately, Sue was attracted to brains, not brawn. And she was quick. She’d never fall for a guy like her man-whore brother. So Bucky didn’t really have to worry. Except that he had to deal with the real thing. As his best man.

Worse than the fact Johnny’s eyes reminded Bucky so much of Steve, his Italian nose, the angle of his cheekbones, his strong chin, worse than that, Johnny seemed to be onto him. Bucky didn’t think Johnny actually knew, but he did know _some_ thing was up. Had tried to talk Sue out of being with him ever since they’d started dating.

“Dating.” Bucky’s dates with Sue had started off as mostly shopping trips where he did a lot of purse-holding, broken up by lunch, Starbucks, and long walks down Fifth Avenue. Then they’d started taking vacations together, walking down Rodeo, making fun of all the people pretending to be rich, the rich pretending to be people. She told him everything, made him laugh. They’d gotten close. And there were only two things they would never be able to share: her work for NASA, which was classified, and way over Bucky’s head, and his sexuality, which was classified in a different way. Oh, Sue knew Bucky checked out guys now and then. Hell, they often played the ratings game together. But she didn’t see that as a barrier to their being together, to getting married. Bucky had tried to talk her out of it. More than once.

“Sue, honey, are you sure? Are you sure this is what you want?”

She had smiled. “Jamie, you’re the best guy any woman could want. You’re kind, understanding, supportive.” She’d fake-punched him on the jaw. “And I know you don’t like to hear it, but you’re really, really pretty.”

Bucky had rolled his eyes. “Looks aren’t everything, sweetheart.”

She’d looked serious, then. “I know. But you’re it, Jamie, the whole package, the perfect partner. You’re my best friend, and you have my back with everything I do. You tell me when I’m being crazy or going too far, and you tell me when I’m selling myself short. You lift me up. That’s what a good partner does.”

He’d squeezed her hand. “Maybe that’s just what a good friend does.”

“Exactly.”

He’d felt like they’d been having two different conversations. But it wasn’t like he didn’t love Sue. He loved the hell out of Sue, was protective of her. She was a brilliant, strong, self-sufficient woman with legs for days and sun-kissed blond hair that looked perfect even when she first woke up in the morning. Any guy would be lucky to have her. He just wasn’t sure he should be that guy.

Sue was the first woman Bucky had had sex with and not felt used. She let him do what he was comfortable with, and didn’t push or demand, didn’t put him down if he shied away from something. She asked before she did to him, and she was really great at snuggling afterwards. It made Bucky wonder: what did she get out of it? She couldn’t possibly be satisfied with what they did, but she never complained. She’d even suggested a threesome with another guy, once. But he couldn’t do that to her. Bucky had tried to set her free, let her know she had his tacit permission to go get her any guy she wanted to, sew her oats, he was fine with it. But to his knowledge, she never had. He felt guilty about that. Like maybe she didn’t believe he meant it.

And now here they were, stuck to one another till death, with her brother glaring suspiciously down the head table at him. Sue had always said, “Just ignore Johnny,” but it was easier said than done. Easiest when he was distracted by all the women falling into his lap. But after a week of rehearsals and getting family from out of town settled, it seemed Johnny had worked his way through all the women that interested him--and probably a few that didn’t. Because tonight, he seemed focused on Bucky alone.

He and Sue had danced the first dance, her choice, kind of the theme of their relationship: Cyndi Lauper’s classic “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” Not very romantic, but very them. After that, Bucky had turned her over to her brother, and hurried back to the head table in hopes of getting very very drunk. Sue had warned him she had something special planned for their wedding night, and he was a nervous wreck thinking about it. Which was stupid. They’d had sex scores of times since that first drunk convention in Vegas escapade, where they’d woken up naked in the same bed, covered in whipped cream.

And certainly nothing could be worse than his bachelor party, which had been thrown by--you guessed it--the best man, who seemed determined to make Bucky cheat on his sister with one of the strippers--maybe all of them--and prove he was unworthy of Sue.

Bucky had locked himself in the bathroom after the first one had flipped upside down in his lap and stuck her lady-lips in his face while her head rubbed against his crotch. That had been enough for him. He’d huddled in there for half the night with a bottle of Tequila he’d swiped off the bar on his way in, praying for the orgy to end soon so that he could go back to his hotel room and get some sleep before the family pre-wedding brunch the next morning.

And from the sound of it, it _had_ been an orgy. Apparently, with the groom gone, Johnny had taken on all the strippers himself. Sam showed him pictures the next day that had burned Bucky’s eyes, and not just because he deeply resented the fact Sue’s brother didn’t seem to respect the fact that strippers were not prostitutes, but also because he’d seen his brother-in-law’s bare ass in more than one of those photos, and now he had to live with that image for the rest of his life. Some things were just best not to know. The fact your brother-in-law had the perfect round-globed, muscular ass of a Greek god was one of them.

Sam himself had ducked out when the sex worker line had been crossed. He’d told Bucky Ben had been passed out behind the bar by then. He didn’t have to tell Bucky which of the guys from his job had stayed. He knew his workers well enough by now to know which ones would run back to their wives and which would stay and partake. 

Bucky’s rescue had come in the form of hurricane Kate, his eldest sister who had--legend had it--stormed in with fire extinguishers to douse the party, demanding to know what Johnny had done with her brother. She’d broken down the bathroom door and hauled him back up to his hotel room for a shower and hot chocolate before bed. “That man is an animal!” she’d fumed. “I will never understand how he and Sue could have come out of the same vagina.” She’d tucked him in and left him with soothing ocean sounds on his nature clock. And Bucky had slept.

But not before thinking of the boy in the car.

Was he just as bad as Johnny, taking advantage of people for money? Tony had been right, it hadn’t proven anything to him that he hadn’t already known.

“Think of me while you’re fucking your wife,” he’d said, crass to the end. “It’ll make things easier.”

Bucky had thought of him then, and relieved some pressure to help him sleep.

 

*

 

The next night, at the reception, after Johnny had danced with Sue, Ben cut in, and the reason for Bucky’s tears returned to the head table. Or he almost did. “I gotta take a leak,” he informed Bucky, as if he’d wanted to know. “Come on.”

_Wait, what?_

He hauled Bucky out of his chair before he could protest, practically dragging him from the reception hall. Johnny was every bit as strong as he looked. Stumbling behind him, Bucky couldn’t help glancing at the back of his tuxedo. Was that godly ass really under there? As if Johnny needed to be more beautiful.

They reached the door to the men’s room at the back of the hotel, and Johnny finally let him go. “What’s this about?” Bucky asked, before he could start. Because it didn’t take a rocket scientist like his wife to figure out Johnny hadn’t dragged him here because he needed help going to the bathroom.

Johnny put on a dazzling smile. Blinding, really. And once again, Bucky was thinking of Steve. “First off, quit looking at me like that,” he snapped, and Bucky recoiled.

“Like what?”

“Like what? You know like what. You just married my damn sister, and you’re looking at me like Romeo and Juliet.”

“N-no I’m not,” Bucky protested, having no idea how he’d been looking but feeling the need to defend himself before the physical violence began.  

“Look, Sue told me you’re bi, and maybe that’s fine with her, but it sure as hell isn’t fine with me.” Bucky started to slowly back away. He should get back to where there were more people. Johnny pointed a threatening finger at him. “You might have her fooled, but you’re not fooling me. I know some bisexual guys--”

 _Wait, really?_ What did that mean?

“--and they do not run from strippers the way you ran at your bachelor party last night!”

Bucky squared his shoulders. “Maybe I just respect women more than they do.”

“Oh, please!” Johnny sneered. “No real man respects women when there’s a nice pair of tits in his face.”

“You’re a pig!” Bucky snarled.

Johnny smiled disarmingly again, crossing his arms over his expansive chest. “Better a red-blooded American pig than a fucking faggot.”

Welp. There it was: his worst nightmare. Bucky did his best to pretend he wasn’t shaking with terror and rage. “Are you finished?” His hands balled into fists, he started to move away more swiftly, afraid to turn his back on his brother-in-law.

“No,” he said. “But you are. Faggot.”

Two pairs of arms grabbed Bucky from behind, forcing his head down, dragging him toward the outdoor pool area. _Shit._ What did you do in a situation like this? Call for help? Wasn’t that what they were expecting of a weak guy? Honestly, the joke was on them, because Bucky had worked in construction for fifteen years. Just because he ran the company now didn’t mean he couldn’t haul iron with the rest of his crew. So he fought them, struggling quietly to prove he was every bit as much of a man as they were. And he could tell from the way they stumbled and Johnny stopped smiling that they weren’t expecting it. But it was still three to one.

Bucky hadn’t been able to hear the music from the reception hall since they’d gotten here, but all of a sudden the DJ put on “Kung Fu Fighting” by Carl Douglas. He wanted to laugh, but his current situation honestly wasn’t funny at all. “You missed the main course.”

_Wait. Sam?_

“Why don’t you try a bite of **this** , _sucker?_ ” Bucky looked up in time to see the architect connect a flying kick with the left guy’s temple, dropping him like a pile of bricks. He managed to back out of the second guy’s grip right before Kate jumped on the bro’s back and started beating him with her purse. She was a single mom. There wasn’t anything that she didn’t carry in that purse. It weighed at least 20 pounds.

“You alright, vanilla bean?” Sam jumped up and grabbed Bucky’s arm to steady him. Bucky nodded, watching Johnny warily. “Don’t worry, man, help is on the way.” As Kate shrieked like a harpy and continued to bludgeon Johnny’s friend with her purse, construction workers flooded the hall behind them, loosening ties and pulling off jackets.

Johnny’s nostrils flared and the brawl began. He yanked Kate off his bro’s back and tossed her at the oncoming crew like a wad of paper, but not before she kicked him in the groin with her pointy-toed Versaces. Bucky ran to pick her up off the carpet and make sure she was alright.

“I’m fine, pretty,” she panted, but her hair had tumbled down out of its fancy bun and her lipstick was smeared.

Behind them, Johnny and his lone conscious fagbashing friend were meeting the throng of construction workers head-on. Bucky felt a little better to see Sue’s friend Ben wasn’t among Team Johnny. But only a little. At least two out of his three groomsmen didn’t want him dead.

“Come on, we gotta go,” Sam was telling them. “I’m black. I can’t be here when the police arrive.”

“Shit, me either,” Kate said. “I’m still on probation.”

“Wait--what?!” But they were already headed toward the valet, Sam towing him and Kate hobbling along beside. “Take those damn heels off, woman!”

“Do you know how much I paid for these?!” she shouted back.

“I didn’t say leave ‘em, I said take ‘em off!”

“You all’re crazy,” Sam told them, glancing around for the parking attendant.

A 1987 Chevy station wagon pulled up, complete with wood paneling. The windows were rolled down, and Bucky heard his sister Becky’s voice from inside. “Average response time for a 137 is five minutes. Get in.”

“I can’t believe this is my wedding,” Bucky moaned as Sam pushed him into the back seat. “Oh. Hi, sweetheart.” His 12-year-old niece was staring at them wide-eyed.

“Mom, did you really start a barroom brawl at Uncle Jimmy’s wedding?”

As Sam slipped in behind Bucky, Kate jumped into the front seat. “Yes I did, pumpkin, and you’ll be able to do the same. After you turn 21.”

Julie’s voice was reverent. “Awesoooooooooooome.”

“I recommend against,” Becky said, pulling out of the drive at an efficient but not suspicious 40 miles per hour. “Your mother has a criminal record which prevented her from securing a business loan from a reputable bank in order to open her first bakery.”

“Oh, shut up, Rebecca. I own a chain now, don’t I?”

“Thanks to money borrowed from the Italian mafia.” Becky adjusted her glasses. A thing she did when she was being a know-it-all.

“They’re businessmen, aren’t they?” Kate was going full porcupine.

“They broke your husband’s kneecaps for paying late,” Becky pointed out.

“He wasn’t a very good husband anyway,” Kate replied.

“Is that why daddy was in a wheelchair when I was four?” his niece asked.

“No, sweetheart, it was a skiing accident.”

“It was not,” Becky corrected.

“Oh, shut up!” Kate hissed. “Like you’re Little Miss Perfect.”

Sam just looked at Bucky. “Man, I always thought _my_ sister was bad.”

“Yeah, try having three of ‘em.” Bucky took a deep breath, trying to figure out how to salvage this. “ _Shit._ I need to call Sue.”

“You think?” Sam sat back, struggling to find the seatbelt now that they’d hit the highway and 85 mph.

“Mom, Uncle Jimmy said a bad word.”

“Julie Ann, how many times have I told you? ‘Shit’ is not a bad word.” Kate sighed. “I never should have sent her to Catholic school.” While his sisters bickered in the background, Bucky took out his flip phone and dialed Sue.

“Jamie?” she sounded panicked.

“Honey, I am _so sorry_.” It felt like his waterworks were turning back on.

“No, _I’m_ sorry, sweetheart. My brother’s an asshole, and I’m pressing charges.”

“Susie, don’t bother. He’ll be in enough trouble for the 137.”

“The what? Jamie, are you okay? Where are you?”

“I’m in the car with Sam and the girls. I figure it’s better if we don’t go back.”

“You’re right. Meet you at the airport?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“It might take a while. The police are going to ask questions.”

“I don’t think this much of the Barnes family can be in a car without stopping at Denny’s.”

“Denny’s?” Sam looked at him with horror. “No way. We’re in New Jersey. It’s Harold’s or bust.”

“Pastramiiiiiiiii!” Julie shrieked, and Bucky winced.

“Okay, maybe not Denny’s.”

Sue laughed. “I love you, James Barnes, you know that?”

There was no denying that her laugh could light up a room. Or the inside of a station wagon. “I love you, too, honey. Call me when you’re on your way.”

“I will.” She blew him a kiss before hanging up.

“Sounds like she’s got it under control,” Sam remarked. “Think you got a keeper.”

“Yeah.” Bucky stared at his closed phone, feeling more sad than proud.

“Was it just me, or was ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ playing while we jumped those two guys?” Kate asked from the front seat.

“Nope,” Sam told her. “I always bring a tape recorder in case of emergencies.”

“With a tape of Carl Douglas?” Kate laughed.

“Hey, if you gonna go down for fighting, might as well do it in style.”


End file.
